Explaining our situation, of which he was no doubt aware, I also expressed my wish to establish legal title to our lands. Brian was in London, undoubtedly seeing Peter Tallis, and together they could develop a solution. That my father had been a fugitive from the queen’s men posed a problem.
Next I wrote to Brian. As a student at the Inns of Court, he would understand better than I the legal complexities of our situation and those who depended upon us. Of Yance’s marriage he knew. I now told him of mine. At the same time I told him of Legare and his need for a representative in London.
How strange are the fortunes of men! My father, a strong young man with ambition, had found on the Devil’s Dyke a rotted wallet in which were several ancient gold coins. Their sale had given him his start in life and led to his coming to America. Yet they had also brought much trouble, for the queen’s officers, inspired by his enemies, believed my father had found King John’s treasure, the lost Crown jewels of England, among which there had been some old coins of gold. The find and the fact that my father lived in the fens not far from the Wash where the treasure had been lost was all that was needed. My father had been seized, questioned, and imprisoned. Despairing of making anyone believe his story, he had escaped from Newgate prison and fled to America.
Our plantations now did well. Our trade with Indians prospered. Each year more and more people came to America, and we knew a time would come when they would press hard upon us, so already Yance and I had gone beyond the mountains and had explored lands there, building our two cabins and planting crops where only Indians had been before. Or so we originally supposed. Now, from discoveries there, we knew that others had been before us.
My hand was tiring from the unfamiliar writing, so I placed the quill upon the table and sat back and stared off into nothing, thinking.
Our father was gone, killed by the Seneca along with his good friend Tom Watkins. My mother was in England with Brian and Noelle. And Jubal? What of Jubal, my strange, lonely, wandering brother?
For years now there had been no word of him. Each season I watched the trails, hoping he would come again to see us, if for a few days only. He was ever the lonely wanderer, ever the remote one, loving us all and being loved, yet a solitary man who loved the wild lands more. He had gone westward, and he had returned from time to time with tales of a great river out there, greater than any we knew, and of wide, fertile lands where there was much game. And then he had come no more.
Yance came to the door. “Kin? Better come to the wall. There’s somebody out there with a white flag.”
CHAPTER XXII
Outside the sun was warm and pleasant. It felt good to be back in buckskins and moccasins again. Pausing a moment, I took a long look around and about, and as far as I could see, we were ready. The men had come in from the fields, and those on the outlying farms would have closed up shutters and barred doors by now.
Since I was hoe handle high, I had been taught to be ready, and so with all of us. A body never knew when the Indians would be coming down upon us, especially the Senecas, who had selected us for their foes. I won’t say enemies because we had nothing to fight about except to make war or protect ourselves. The Senecas lived a far piece away to the north, and it took them days to get where we were. As long as I could remember, they had been coming.
Mounting the ladder to the walk along the inside of the wall, I looked out over the palisade, and there was the white flag.
Turning, I looked at the back wall, but Jeremy Ring was there, and Jeremy wasn’t about to be taken by surprise. There was always a chance that under cover of talk they would try to close in on us.
We had sickness amongst us, so we were short-handed on the walls, but there were six of us up there, and at the first shot the womenfolk would be out to reload for us, and we had two dozen spare muskets, all of which could be kept loaded and ready for use.
“If you wish to talk,” I shouted, “come out in the open! But no more than one of you or we start shooting!”
What Bauer had in mind, I had no idea, but by this time he had scouted our position with care. Our fort was well situated, but scattered up the valley were a dozen other cabins occupied by members of our little colony, often enough by families. Each was prepared to defend itself, and each was built in such a way as to receive support from at least one other cabin. In other words, when attacking one cabin, the attackers must in most cases expose themselves to fire from another.
Yet I doubted if he had any true estimate of our strength, nor had I any of his. Whether he had a half-dozen men or many more I had no way of knowing. We ourselves must do some scouting.
It was Lashan who came forward.
He strode into the open and stood there, feet well apart, hands on hips. He wore a cutlass and a brace of pistols but carried a musket as well.
“You folks in there!” he called. “You give us Sackett and that Macklin girl and we won’t burn you out. If you don’t surrender them, we’ll kill you, every one!”
“Diana Macklin is now my wife,” I replied, “and we have no intention of surrendering anything. As for you, I would suggest you start back to the coast while you still have supplies enough to feed you.”
No doubt he had brought his men along with a promise of loot and had never expected to face an established fortress surrounded by what would be to them a trackless wilderness. It seemed the odds were with us, yet I was wary. Max Bauer might hate me enough to follow and kill, but he was a canny man with an eye to enriching himself always.
Nor was an attack by him to be compared to an attack by Indians. Max Bauer would know something of siege warfare and might many times have attacked such positions as ours. Indians, on the other hand, had not learned how to attack fortified positions. No doubt time would change that. Clouds hung low around the Nantahala Mountains to the east, and the nearer slope of Chunky Gal Mountain was dark with foreboding.
“Going to storm,” I commented idly to Yance.
“Threatenin’,” he agreed. He shifted his musket. “What you reckon they’ll do?”
Lashan was still there, standing in the same way, and somebody might have been talking to him from the trees. He called out sharply. “You got an hour. You best make the most of it.”
“Stalling,” I said. “They’ve something in mind.”
It was very still. Then, back over the Nantahalas, I heard a mutter of thunder. Rains could be mighty sudden here, sometimes a regular cloudburst. They had better find shelter for themselves.
Bauer knew, of course, that I had not yet been to Shawmut or Plymouth with whatever evidence I had obtained. He also knew that once I put such evidence before the authorities there, such as they were, his profitable trade was ended. The trade in young white girls was a specialized trade, yet it involved no costly transportation across the ocean, only rare losses at sea, and top prices. No doubt some of his trade had been with the Indians for captives they had taken, but once the word was out, all ports would be closed to him, and he would be a fugitive.
My first intent had been to get Diana to a place of safety. The trip overland to Plymouth could be a fast one, and Samuel Maverick would put his influence behind the evidence I had. The bare fact that such things had happened was enough to destroy the chances of it happening again.
So Max Bauer, both for his own safety and the continuance of his lucrative trade, must eliminate me. Somehow or other he must lure me from the fort to be killed or destroy the fort itself with me inside.
Lightning flashed back over Chunky Gal Mountain, and thunder grumbled in the canyons. A few spatters of rain fell.
“They aren’t likely to try anything now,” Yance commented. “Get their powder wet.”
“I was thinking about my cabin,” I said, “and my corn crop. Be a while before we get back out that way.”